I told my third graders if they wanted to make a book. They were impressed and hesitated to believe me, but when I explained the idea, they soon loved it. This group of students loves reading books and they use to borrow books from my class library every week, so despite their young age, I thought they were the perfect group to make a book. Also, I have a British student who helped a lot during the process.
I divided them into six small groups and asked them to watch the tutorial video with me. Then, we had a vote to choose which story we were going to use. They decided to choose the fable they were reading in Spanish class.
To begin with, I made the cover and the first two pages under their instructions in the digital board. When they felt comfortable with the app, the groups were one by one coming to my table to work on their two pages with my help. I left the projector on so the other students could watch the process, which they loved.
We used a short text we found online and some pictures from Google Images they liked. They also adapted some parts of the text they couldn't understand. The main goal of this activity for them was to be aware of their capacities to work with English texts, copy them and adapt them to their knowledge (with some help, of course). They used their creativity to add props, which they loves the most, although they decided to keep the same format with the scenes so that the book would come out, and I quote, "as a real one". Some of them were a bit overwhelmed by the writing, but the other students encouraged them to make their best and helped them a lot.
Next time I would like to invite them as students and make a collaborative book as I think it's meant to be done, but for now, I think they are too young and it's better for them to do it all together.
It took two sessions to finish the activity and they were constantly raising their hands to share their opinions and discuss the activity.
